Collectors vote Charles M. Schulz stamps ‘overall favorite’ US stamp of 2022

“Peanuts” stamps that had Snoopy fans lining up at its Santa Rosa launch last year are also, as it turns out, very popular with collectors.

Readers of Linn’s Stamp News, a magazine dedicated to stamp collecting, named the 10 “Peanuts” stamps as their favorite U.S. stamp release of 2022, the newspaper reported last week.

The stamps, commemorating the birth centennial of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz and depicting characters from Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip, were officially unveiled in September during a ceremony at Santa Rosa’s Charles M. Schulz Museum.

(Celebrating 100 years of Charles Schulz)

‘“Peanuts’ was celebrated for its melancholy wit and wisdom,” said Luke T. Grossman, senior vice president for finance and strategy with the United States Postal Service, during the Sept. 30 ceremony.

The newspaper’s annual U.S. Stamp Popularity Poll, first held in 1948, was launched in December. More than 900 mail-in ballots and several hundred responses were registered online through March.

The poll, the magazine stresses, is neither scientific nor statistically valid.

Last year’s commemorative "Peanuts“ stamps were issued in a pane of 20, with two stamps each of the “Peanuts” characters Charlie Brown, Lucy, Franklin, Sally, Pigpen, Linus, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie and Snoopy with Woodstock, with a photo of Schulz in the center. The stamps are designated as “forever” stamps, meaning they can be used to mail a 1-ounce letter regardless of when the stamps are purchased or used.

The release was the third U.S. Postal Service stamp set celebrating “Peanuts.” The first was in 2001, after Schulz’s death, and showed Snoopy in his alternate persona as the World War I flying ace. The second came out in 2015, marking the 50th anniversary of the TV special “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” first shown in 1965.

Schulz lived in Sonoma County for decades. He died in Santa Rosa in 2000 at the age of 77.

For more information, go to linns.com.